French Deal

Well strike me down with a bolt of lightening. After that rant about the tiler being so slow and costing so much, Rick rings me this morning from France having just seen the progress on the house - and there is some - to tell me that the tiler has died. He had a massive heart attack last week and died at the young age of 46 or so. Luckily it was not while at work because that would have made the tiling situation even more unpalatable. I'm going to light a candle at the Hidden Gem church in Manchester to accompany his soul on its way. The Hidden Gem church is in the centre of the commercial and retail area and is exactly that, a hidden gem and well worth a visit if you are ever in Manchester. Actually, I'm off to Singapore next week so I'll find a temple and light a joss stick which is more me. When my friend from Houston Bill Hicks died so young I was in Bangkok and I put some gold leaf on the reclining buddah. Again, if you are in Bangkok, do see the reclining buddah but go very early in the morning because the coaches arrive mid morning and the santuary and spiritual essences get lost in the brouhaha and postcard selling.

posted by French Deal @ 2:05 pm 0 comments

This is all about tiles, bathroom tiles. Previous post noted that finding decent bathroom tiles at affordable prices is not an easy task, unless you can nip over into Spain with a five axle lorry. So it was those expensive numbers from the family factory down the road in Orriule if you remember. I believe in supporting local artisans, it makes me feel sanctimonious because I'm putting money into the local economy and I live with the probably false impression that everyone local will like me better for so doing. Anyway, the tiles were installed in one bathroom, one ensuite and one additional W.C. Not the taj mahal in terms of space, but an alright-sized-more-than-swinging-a-cat around space.

So Guillhaume, bless, finally sent the costings of work done so far. To lay tiles in those ablution areas, it has taken 109 hours of work (and we still haven't done the upstairs ensuite). I chose bigg-ish tiles so it wouldn't be fiddly, and suspended toilets and basins so it's easy to get around. You have to think of these things when paying 33.50 euros an hour to the tiler. So figure that, a solid three weeks work at high cost with no Ricard stops. It's cost a fortune, thousands in fact.

So now I have bathrooms that I will have to stop myself from marvelling at for the sheer expansive cost of sticking some tiles on the floors and walls. If I can remember how to put up a blog picture I will do so - one of the hand painted tiles around the basin. What WAS I thinking.

John, if you're reading this - there's a space behind the cooker which needs your attention once I've laid my hands on some nice antique type tiles in a junk shop in the UK. Have a free holiday and the tiling job is yours - mind you, you would get a free holiday anyway - but I could dress up as a French maid.

posted by French Deal @ 3:50 pm 0 comments

This plot thickens. But Loic has solved it all - 'you just can't trust people from the south east - they're all berg-U-leurs - all offff zem' he told me over the phone with gay flourish.

On my return I had telephoned everyone I could think of about the missing items from the house and barns. Turns out that Monsieur Gain the plumber said that strangely enough he had taps and a shower head go missing from the house. Then Monsieur Larressat's crowd said that tools had gone missing. But most importantly some things I was giving home to for a friend in Australia went missing - and that's family heirlooms. They went along with my brand new coffee maker.

So Loic rang the mayor of the village, Monsieur Touza and the story unravelled. Over the last four months there had been a string of complaints about items going missing from all the surrounding villages. Two and two started to add up and it eventually equalled up at Salies de Bearn where two n'er-do-wells from - guess where - the south east of France were holed up enjoying a four month stealing spree. They appeared in court last week.

So I rang the mayor and he said that he was going to his village, Oraas, to tell everyone to keep an eye on my house, but that I do need to padlock the gates to stop such people from driving in their trucks and filling them up with other people's stuff.

Now would you expect that in a quiet rural village with a population of no more than 62? Well I didn't. Though I have a history. In Manchester, living in posh Didsbury, I was burgled 13 times in 16 years; I moved into a flat in Whalley Range and was burgled in the first month and now in Oraas, I've been burgled and I haven't even got there.

Still the good news is that I have been overwhelmed with the level of action and concerned care taken particularly by Loic and Monsieur Gain and then the mayor and Monsieur Larressat. What more can I wish for with so many guardian angels, so my faith is restored. Vive L'Oraas.

Now what about that progress report you promised me last Monday Guillhaume?

posted by French Deal @ 1:19 pm 0 comments

Remember that one - a bit of a disappointment? Well here we go again. Four weeks later, and back to France to check on progress, only to find that there has been none. Or very very little. There was some compensation - it was brilliantly hot and sunny and coming from England where there's been non stop rain for a month and another month and a half forecast for the same, that was indeed some compensation to my fretting.

Still, Stephen my son who accompanied me and who had brought all his friends last summer before the work was done, was really pleased and said the new windows and doors and so on looked just great. However, money worries are starting to hit hard. And that, coupled with the lack of evidence of men on site, caused me another frenzy of doubt. Still, luckily we were both able to retire to the beautiful, completed, fabulous view, Basque house of Rick and Mol where we spent the evening and after the usual desperate glass or three of wine to steady my failing courage, we had a good night's sleep and I vowed to tackle Guillhaume the builder's project manager the next day.

This I did, up the road to Sauveterre and there he was and even his cuteness was just not going to get in the way here. I got strict, so Stephen stayed in the car. After shuffling here and there, Guillhaume agreed that not much had been done because, well, wouldn't you know, there was an american that needed a pool built and two other houses being worked on and their owners were getting heavy and therefore got priority and, well, just so much work on the go. So I pulled out the big guns which is 'Monsieur Hall is coming next week and he will not be pleased'. Rick is a client of 16 years ago and he, as an architect and longterm extoller of their work, carries weight in their eyes, unlike myself who was seen as a someone that should really being doing something more sensible.

So I put my foot down and, in addition, complained about the amount of stuff that had disappeared from the outhouses. But I don't think that it was them, it's people just helping themselves which is easy to do because the whole place is open to the breeze. As a working farm all the barns are open and easy to get into. Anyway, large amounts of annoyance conveyed in my best french, we ended the conversation with a joke and a chat about his girlfriend Marie who had just returned from a year out in Australia, Cambodia, Vietnam etc and was safely back in his arms. No wonder he wasn't caring much about anything else and was grinning like a maniac. Ah c'est l'amour je suppose.

posted by French Deal @ 1:34 pm 0 comments

Didn’t sleep at all last night once I had come round from the unconscious dozing induced by the wine. So at dawn, worried, I started out for Oraas. And in the quiet of the Saturday morning, the mist in the valley, the frogs from the river and the cows carrying on with their munching in the same way they do every day, I regained my new home in my heart. It looks quite good really. There’s a lot of decorating work to do indoors and the garden is non-existent now, but the windows and shutters and renovated oak beams look great.

I wandered around, picking the odd rose and placing it in one of the many empty Ricard bottles when, blow me down, there’s that old bloke again in my corridor. We got chatting as we sort of had to, and it turns out that he is the essence of Oraas.

Among the village population of about 60, he is the grandfather of the tribe that makes up around 32 of the village inhabitants. How’s that for the Waltons. He informed me that he was 80 that day – so I threw myself on him, planting bises on each cheek. If he knows that many people, I’d better be his best friend fast. I can’t wait for him to sit at my table drinking coffee (and Ricard probably) talking about the olden days, apparently he knew Madame Deboue who lived in my house really well, they went to school together. Judging by all the school desks, blackboards and metal school kitchen cookery stuff, it looks as if the school existed in one of the barns. But I’m told the stuff there belongs to the mayor and he swears he will move it one day. How come people don’t nick that and only take that antique wood farm stuff which I wanted for my on-site museum. There are some very fetching holy statues among that school stuff that would look gems on my new patio, especially sat alongside my fibreglass cows. Still I thought I would save the history chats with him for those long days in Oraas when nothing much happens.

Patrick, my accompanying cyclist, discovered a website on Oraas. The history page is two paragraphs – salt was first found here, but Salies de Bearn nearby marketed it and look at them now. The local chateau was owned by a director of the Comedie Francaise for decades and he came down at weekends with actors from Paris and put on Sunday afternoon performances in the chateau grounds for the local yokels. He loved the quiet of Oraas, the website says, and he was going to build a bridge across the river to save everyone having to do a 7 km detour to get to the other side of the Oloron, but he died suddenly and the bridge was built at Escos/Puyoo and look at them now - railway, Carrefour and everything. The web page goes on, and it appears that Oraas’s claim to fame is to basically miss out. There’s no commerce, no shops, no artisans but there is a boulangere that comes round once a day in her van and a butcher and fishmonger that each come round once a week in their vans, so we won’t starve. Even the mayor doesn’t live in Oraas but in the next village because the town he represents is so dull. But it’s going to be my home and judging by the friendliness and quirkiness of the octogenarian, there’s a place for me there.

posted by French Deal @ 11:03 am 0 comments

Well I don’t know. This whole house building thing is a bit much, but then it’s a bit much for me in any country.

Here’s the thing. A recent visit to Oraas revealed multitudinous work activity from the plasterer, the tile layer, the electrician, the plumber – the butcher baker and candlestick etc… the progress of which was conveyed to me on site over a cacophony of drilling, sawing, French pop radio and general shouting (look at all those empty bottles of Ricard I mused to myself). If they were trying to impress me with the ferocity of the energy they were devoting to fixing up that house, they failed completely. I went into mental meltdown. And, by the way who’s that old bloke wandering around amongst the 14 hyperactive people on site.

The work looks good, the bathroom tiles are over-rated, the terracotta floor tiles are fabulous. Minutiae were pointed out to me, but then - hey – where’s the staircase, am I to spend the rest of my life climbing a ladder to get upstairs. Gullhaume, ah bless, told me it was with the carpenter. But when I pressed him for a drawing he referred back to the original estimate only to discover that the cost had been left off. Oh the shame and embarrassment he displayed, so he suggested a nice pine open backed modern staircase. After I shrieked and brought him to 8.8 on the emotional Richter scale, he got the message. ‘Find an old gal, wait for her to die, and raid her house for the old solid oak overly polished staircase – do like everyone else does Guillhaume. And, by the way, where have all my lovely huge half barrels gone that were to be my instant garden?’ Shoulder shrugging gaellic style overtook his body together with excessive eyebrow raising.

It was not a good day and it was boiling hot. So I went back to Rick’s house with my friend Patrick the cyclist and downed a cold bottle of Entre Deux Mers faster than you could say ‘Ah ooooooway’.

posted by French Deal @ 9:01 am 0 comments